Archives of the Mayor's Press Office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: December 19, 1996

Release #661-96

Contact: Jack Deacy (212) 788-2965 or Maggie Lear (ACS) (212) 266-2255


MAYOR GIULIANI AND ACS COMMISSIONER SCOPPETTA RELEASE
COMPREHENSIVE REFORM PLAN FOR CHILD WELFARE AGENCY

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta today unveiled a comprehensive reform plan for the city’s child welfare agency. The new plan is outlined in “Protecting the Children of New York: A Plan of Action for the Administration for Children’s Services”, a 163-page report aimed at ensuring the safety and well-being of all the children of New York.

Joining the Mayor and Commissioner Scoppetta at a press conference at the Child Advocacy Center in Brooklyn were Schools Chancellor Rudolph Crew, Police Commissioner Howard Safir, Health and Hospitals Chair Dr. Rosa Gill and Jocelyn Jean-Phillipe, an ACS counselor who was recently honored as one of the City’s most dedicated workers.

The Plan of Action represents a major step forward in our continuing efforts to transform the Administration for Children’s Services into a high performing, goal-oriented organization,” Mayor Giuliani said. “This plan is a blueprint for long overdue reform and signals a new direction in child welfare policy and operations. One of the most important elements in the plan is the emphasis on accountability, which historically has been a significant problem in the administration of child protective services.”

“During its first year, ACS has already made marked progress by increasing training and eligibility standards of new caseworkers, creating a management structure, strengthening accountability, and implementing a state-wide computer network system,” the Mayor added. “The initiatives presented in the Plan of Action reflect the full commitment of this administration to the protection and well-being of each and every child.”

Commissioner Scoppetta said, “The Plan of Action is a culmination of 10 months of study of all systems and practices in the agency and an evaluation of child welfare agencies nationally. The plan uses all available means to insure that children do not live in danger of abuse or neglect. We plan to involve the entire city, including each resident and neighborhood, in creating a coordinated, interdisciplinary approach to keep all children safe and protected.”

“The plan sets a new standard in child welfare through the focus on careful and sound assessment of every child coming into care at ACS. Children must be taken out of harm’s way, restored to a family that has been repaired with the help of the foster care system, or removed permanently from that family where it has been demonstrated that the behaviors which led to the abuse or neglect of the children cannot be corrected,” said Commissioner Scoppetta.

The Plan of Action calls for the reorganization and refocusing of the agency to overcome decades of internally created and externally imposed impediments to quality care and a disjointed organizational structure. During the past year, Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner Scoppetta supported the passage in Albany of “Elisa’s Law,” which made possible the release of certain previously confidential concerning ACS investigations. The City also continues to lobby for the passage of the “Positive Toxicology Bill”, which would permit child welfare agencies to presume abuse and neglect if infants are born with illegal drugs in their system, and for legislation that would classify endangering the welfare of a child as a felony.

In order that the larger child welfare community have input into the plan and its implementation, implementation advisory groups will be convened in the next four to six weeks to review the plan. These groups will include experts from outside the agency who will be asked to report to Commissioner Scoppetta.

“The plan seeks to galvanize the entire City to include every resident, neighborhood, house of worship and service provider to discover and report every instance of child abuse and neglect, and join the crusade for children to make certain that every child is safe in a loving and supportive home,” Commissioner Scoppetta said. Highlights of the plan include:

Improved Investigations
Creation of “instant response teams” to coordinate responses to serious allegations of abuse and neglect which will include police, prosecutors, and ACS caseworkers.
Development of enhanced investigative training curriculum by ACS, the Police Department and the five District Attorney’s Offices to improve investigative technique.
To minimize trauma to victims of sexual abuse, greater reliance will be made of Child Advocacy Centers and similar hospital based programs to coordinate the efforts of caseworkers, police officers, prosecutors and medical personnel at one site.

Accountability
To correct decades of mismanagement and lack of focus, ACS will institute a comprehensive accountability system to ensure that every employee and contractor knows and executes his or her responsibilities.
For the first time, performance measures that evaluate outcomes – positive results for children -- will be tracked at all levels of the agency and serve as the basis for management decisions. For the first time, contracts will be evaluated based on the contract agency’s performance in achieving these outcome goals and standards.
The Accountability Review Panel, under the direction of the ACS General Counsel, will investigate child fatalities and cases of serious abuse and neglect where there is an indication of internal mismanagement. Neighborhood-Based Services.
To strengthen the community role in supporting children, ACS will develop neighborhood-based programs to provide preventive, foster and adoptive services through a network of neighborhood providers.
To minimize the trauma that children experience when they are placed in foster homes far from their friends, school and extended family, ACS will develop a neighborhood based foster care system to ensure, to the extent possible, that children placed in foster care are able to stay in their own schools and communities.
Within 72 hours of every removal, ACS will convene a case conference with all relevant parties available which may include birth parents, foster parents, foster-care agency workers, law enforcement, hospital, school, clergy, child care staff and other service providers to determine the best possible course of action.
Establishment of a new family-to-family program that will increase the role of foster parents to assist in keeping children in contact with birth parents where appropriate and to act as role models for birth parents. To make communities more accessible and familiar to front-line workers, caseworkers will work out of existing field offices and be deployed in newly created zones which will coincide with community district boundaries.

Create Two New Civil Service Titles
Immediate work will begin with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the Office of Labor Relations, and negotiations will begin with the unions, to create two new civil-service titles. The new civil-service titles will provide Child Protection investigators and Family Permanency social workers with professional career paths and promotional opportunities based on performance, productivity, advanced educational achievements, and experience.
To improve investigations, the Child Protection investigators will focus exclusively on the initial investigation of allegations of abuse and neglect.
To reduce investigative caseloads, cases will be transferred from Child Protection investigators to Family Permanency social workers within the first 90 days of foster care placement.

Increasing and Expediting Adoptions
To provide children permanent homes as quickly as possible, ACS will streamline the adoption process. Upon entry into foster care, every caseworker will plan for the goal of reunifying that child with the birth family, while simultaneously preparing to comply with the extensive paperwork and process requirements of completing adoptions.
ACS will recruit adoptive parents through churches, congregations and other religious institutions throughout the city based on the “One Church, One Child” model.
For the first time, an adoption mediation system will help abbreviate an often lengthy court process. ACS will explore the use of the subsidized kinship guardianship as an alternative to adoption.
Inter-Agency Council for Children (ICC)
To ensure that all government entities interested in the welfare of children work together, ACS will invite participation in its efforts.
A new Inter-Agency Council for Children (ICC) will be established that will meet quarterly to coordinate services for children and will include representatives of City agencies involved in the lives of children. ACS will invite the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the Board of Education, the Family Court, the District Attorney’s Offices and the Police Department to join this council.
To help discover and report every instance of abuse or neglect ACS and the Board of Education have formed a new partnership to enlist teachers and school administrators in identifying children at risk. A new training of mandated reporters to detect and report abuse and neglect will be conducted by ACS.

Training
To ensure high quality casework practices, ACS is instituting a major effort to train all levels of staff that have direct contact with children.
Enhance the training for new recruits which has already been extended from three months to ten months. English language proficiency, a degree in a relevant major, and a competency exam are now requirements.
Every front-line worker will be provided with needed on-going training.
Management skills training will be offered to those being promoted to the supervisory level.
Joint training for attorneys and caseworkers will be offered on relevant legal issues.
A scholarship program will be offered for ACS staff to receive graduate degrees.

Family Court
ACS will work with Family Court administrators to streamline the court process by eliminating non-essential court appearances and scheduling cases to reduce waiting time in court.
A single attorney will remain with each ACS case from beginning to end, to handle all aspects of the proceedings from placement, to reunification or adoption.
Computerization and State-Wide Management Information System (MIS) With Federal funds, ACS is embarking on a $67 million effort to automate child welfare and create a state-wide computer network system. Along with other capabilities, the system will permit sharing of information, regulate casework practice, detail on-line policies and procedures, and give access to resource material. Approximately 5,000 computers have been installed, and software is in the development stage.

Improving Services
Development of a new independent living program which will prepare adolescents with the education and resources necessary to successfully transition to a productive, independent life.
Creation of a not-for-profit organization that will be managed by ACS and serve as an incubator for innovative programs.



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